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Peer review is an important issue in scholarly communication. Arguably, it is the defining characteristic between a blog and a scholarly article. Authorea believes in exploring new models of peer review in ways that peer reviewers can be rewarded and recognized. Accordingly, we offer authors and the public at large the ability to annotate documents, to write post-publication peer reviews, and to post work immediately and openly.

Publons, an innovative young company co-founded by Andrew Preston and Daniel Johnston, was started specifically to improve how peer review is coordinated, accomplished, and rewarded. We've known Andrew for a few years and are happy to have him as our first interviewee in a new series we're calling Academics Turned Founders.

In physics we have the concept of particles with names like electrons,
photons, phonons, gluons, etc. While I was doing my PhD, one of my
professors - a good friend of mine - introduced me to a new kind of
particle, the publon. A publon is a hypothetical particle representing
the minimum unit of publishable material. It’s a joke in academic
circles about the relentless pressure to publish more. And that is where
Publons came from.

Peer review is at the heart of research. It grew increasingly obvious to
us that great peer review helps advance human knowledge faster. Expert
reviewers refine breakthrough research and prevent bad science from
crippling the rate of discovery. At the same time we were seeing all
sorts of online sites start to help people highlight their expertise in
similar areas (StackOverflow, Quora, etc). It just became obvious that
there needed to be a place for expert peer reviewers to be recognised
for their contributions.